Japan Robot Week offers new approaches to nursing care

Japan Robot Week kicked off Wednesday with a major Tokyo exhibition showcasing new technologies for everything from communications and remote video monitoring to disaster response.

Nursing is a prominent theme, with a special display area for products designed to facilitate care for the elderly or infirm.

The nursing space was arranged by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to give manufacturers a boost as Japan grapples with the aging population.

“The aging society is a big issue for this country,” said Takahisa Mano, deputy director of technical research at the Manufacturing Science and Technology Center, the organization overseeing the special exhibition space. Mano said in the future there may be too few facilities and staff to care for those who need it.

A typical exhibitor is Cyberdyne Inc., of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. The firm is displaying its Hybrid Assistive Limb — known as HAL — which helps people with severely limited leg mobility to walk.

This month, the firm announced the release of a new HAL model designed for healthy people. Worn on the waist, it gives the user extra lifting power when picking up heavy objects.

Akira Hosokawa, a Cyberdyne business planner, said the new unit mainly targets people working at nursing care facilities.

“Employee turnover is a serious problem for the nursing care industry,” said Hosokawa. He said many workers suffer back problems from carrying patients, a reason often cited for leaving the job.

Tokyo University of Science and Hosei University are also displaying wearable robot suits that assist people in performing nursing care work.

Other nursing care-related exhibits are not conventional robots but systems, such as those that use cameras and computers to monitor elderly people living alone or those with dementia.

Meanwhile, Mitsubishi Electric Tokki Systems Corp. is showcasing a machine designed to work at disaster sites.

Its Frigo-M weighs 23 kg and resembles a small tank.

The robot can run up and down stairs and has already proved its paces inside the No. 1 reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Robot toys that can verbally communicate with their users are on display as well.

Tomy Co., the major Tokyo-based toy maker, unveiled a new communications robot called Robi jr. that can speak about 1,000 phrases and sing about 50 songs.

The 20-cm-tall humanoid robot that will hit the market in January can move its arms and legs, but can’t walk.

But I do not think that human beings actually want to be taken care of by machines?

Eagle

“The aging society is a big issue for this country,”
——
It’s not the aging society that creates the problem but the fumbling as well as the unwillingness of the government to provide proper social care for them.

And they just won’t until it becomes a lucrative business. Now they have those robots they can sell them and the bots will take care of the elderly generation in the designated facilities. They’re so good so smart and can take care of the incapable people even without human intervention. Moreover, they don’t even need to be payed salary.

Japan is getting robotized, these smart slaves work for free and my kind message to the government — you know robots don’t pay taxes, don’t do shopping and don’t boost the economy.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands unemployed people dies or commit suicide in their hopeless situation unable to find a job, and I can tell from my personal experiences they would be happy to work with the elderly, only if they could.

And they don’t suffer back problems from carrying patients. It’s a lie. A big lie. Patients are heavy for one nurse, not for two or three. They suffer back problems because they are used by their stingy employers and they have to do the carrying and the lifting alone where two or three nurses required to do the job safely, i.e. one has to do the job of three. As usual. 過労死。

The solution if it ever occurred to the government — employ stuff enough for the job, pay them well. You know you have to pay them well if you want them to pay tax and consume.

Chandrakant Kulkarni

May God bless all care-taker robots!

rossdorn

Yes, that could be like that, but only in Japan. Or, as John Updike called them in the Rabbitt books, Japanese people are a lot like robot-monkeys.

I still think the product has a future in our inhuman societies, because in the rest of the world the governments do not have enough money to pay for human helpers, or do not want to spend it on useless things. Old people have the pleasant habit of dying before their complaints about their treatment are of interest to anybody.
That of course goes for the whole world.